Coal India production falls short of target

Kolkata, Nov 1 (IANS) Coal India, the country’s biggest miner, saw its coal production increase marginally by 0.7 percent during the first half of the 2010-11 fiscal compared to the same period last year.

The production figure of 185.70 million tonnes fell nine percent short of the target of 203.95 million tonnes.

“Coal production of 185.70 million tonnes in the first half of the current fiscal has led to only a marginal growth of 0.7 percent over the corresponding production last year,” company’s director (technical) N.C. Jha said here Monday while addressing the 35th foundation day celebrations.

“The target was to produce 203.95 million tonnes of coal in April-September this fiscal. The slippage is 18.25 million tonnes,” an official said.

Last year, the coal production was 184.44 million tonnes in the April-September period.

The official said the company has set a target to produce 460.5 million tonnes of coal in 2010-11.

“Compared to the second half of the fiscal, the production in the first half is always less. There is often a six percent gap,” said Coal India chairman Partha Bhattacharyya.

Bhattacharyya said the company ended 2009-10 with a pithead stock of 63 million tonnes. “This had resulted in a lot of coal remaining exposed.”

“Now we have cleared 15 million tonnes which has led to the pithead stock going down to 48 million tonnes,” he said.

Referring to Coal India’s IPO, which is scheduled for listing Wednesday, he said the company had held 175 road shows across the globe, besides meeting 400 investors.